The semantic differential is a classic approach to
describe persons. The Semantic Differential for Measuring Child
Personality (SDMCP) was developed to obtain subjective judgments
of child personality to be used in educational counseling and
decision making. Contrary to objective personality tests, the aim
of the SDMCP is to get standardized descriptions of a child from
different persons. These descriptions can be compared with regard
to individual attribution processes and expectancies concerning
future child development.

The SDMCP contains 31 pairs of adjectives resp.
adjective groups, derived from traditional personality concepts
(Lersch, Cattell). Each item had a 5-point scale as well as an
additional "neither nor"-category.

The SDMCP was analyzed based on data from a sample
of 778 parents (mean age: 40 years; 50 % males, 50 % females;
average number of children: 2.2 children) and 121 children (mean
age: 12 years). The children were used to validate the parental
estimations.

The results (ANOVA; factors: parent and child
gender, child age) showed some interaction effects which may be
interpreted as the effects of role stereotypes and parental
expectancies with respect to the development of child personality.
In general, parents have very distinctive expectancies of child
future personality.

The internal structure of the SDMCP was tested by
factor analysis. Six factors explain 80 percent of variance and
are congruent to traditional classifications of personality with
objective tests, especially to the secondary structure of the
16PF. These results validate the hypothesis that the parental
semantic structure is similar to scientific psychological
categories.

A cluster analysis (Ward) identified 6 main types of
child personality: strong and active - socially adjusted and
well-balanced - self-centered and dominant - labile - passive and
weak - introverted and weak. These clusters were crossvalidated by
a discriminant analyses. The results confirmed the structure
found. These types of personality are similar to empirical results
in other studies.

Criterion validity has been tested with a subsample
of 377 parents by comparing the judgments of fathers and mothers
(The mean correlation between the single judgments of fathers and
mothers was rØ = .43, the contingency coefficient between
the 6 clusters was CC = .53). Additionally, in a sample of 121
families the self-ratings of the children were compared to
parental ratings. Both analyses proved to be satisfactory (The
mean correlation between the judgments of fathers and children was
rØ = .29, between mothers and children rØ = .27.
Comparing clusters the contingency coefficient between parental
and children ratings was CC = .45. A remarkable difference was
found between the coefficients for boys (CC = .43) and girls (CC =
.62)).